This article originally appeared in the April 2013 issue of Architectural Digest.

In 2005 San Francisco designer Abigail Turin and her husband, Jon Gans, ventured at low tide to a swath of California beach that’s hard for anyone other than residents along the shore to access. Turin and Gans, an investment manager, had fallen in love with this part of Carpinteria—just south of the city of Santa Barbara—during an earlier vacation. Their realtor, however, insisted they’d never find a house on the secluded beach, given how rarely people part with properties there.

But Turin was not easily deterred. After all, this is a woman who, at the age of 27, left a promising career in the London office of architect David Chipperfield to return to her native California and establish her own design studio, which has since grown into the celebrated firm Kallos Turin. “What about that one?” she recalls asking her husband, pointing to a run-down midcentury-modernist dwelling on an unkempt lot. “I could see that underneath a healthy layer of dirt it was one of those swank 1960s beach homes that had at one time hosted glamorous cocktail parties.”

Her instincts proved right. According to the property’s caretaker, whom they subsequently contacted, Ronald Reagan, among other notables, had once been a guest, but the residence had suffered over the years. Though it wasn’t on the market, the couple arranged to rent the seven-bedroom house for the summer. “It was almost uninhabitable,” remembers Turin. By the end of the season, knowing they had indeed found a diamond in the rough, they persuaded the owner to sell.

“The beach is everything,” says Turin, an avid paddleboarder. This patch of the Pacific is far enough from Santa Barbara to give it a sense of privileged isolation. And while the likes of Kevin Costner and George Lucas have houses here, Carpinteria is also a laid-back home for an agricultural community and military personnel from nearby bases.

B&B Italia sofas are grouped with Cappellini tables in the living room; the floor lamp is by Flos, the throw is by Hermès, and the walls are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace.

The couple and their eight-year-old daughter spend most of the year in San Francisco, in a Pacific Heights house that Turin carefully restored to emphasize its 1920s heritage. The Carpinteria retreat, with its clean lines and beach setting, presented a chance to try something new. “I didn’t want the place to feel precious,” Turin says, wandering barefoot over its new white-oak floors, which double as a superhighway for children careening around on various wheeled contraptions. “This home was designed for sand, sea, and scooters.”

The big task was to make the most of the location. With that in mind, the designer replaced several walls with windows and glass doors, opening rooms to the central courtyard and expansive views of the waterfront, where seals loll on the sand and dolphins leap across the surf—sometimes accompanying Turin’s family on their forays into the sea. In the distance, the Channel Islands loom on the horizon like immense ghost ships.

As befits a vacation home, the decor is defined by playfulness. The white surfaces provide a crisp, modernist backdrop for moments of Technicolor exuberance—such as the abstract Peter Coffin works on paper and funky Verner Panton children’s chairs in the kitchen and the blue mosaic tile that lines the floor of one bathroom. “The structure’s ’60s vibe gives you great license to have fun with it,” says Turin. A human-size fiberglass rabbit by artist Ama Torrance greets visitors in the broad front hall, a striped Gaetano Pesce chair and ottoman animate the living room, and a trio of skateboard decks by artist John Baldessari preside over the dining room.

With the help of the Los Angeles architecture and design firm Marmol Radziner, Turin brought the same spiritedness to the landscaped grounds. In addition to integrating generous sweeps of lavender and ferns, they planted a vegetable-and-herb garden, which yields the fresh jalapeño peppers that are a major ingredient chez Turin-Gans. Lush mounds of zoysia grass now cushion the oceanfront lawn (“somersault territory,” as Turin calls it). The adjacent fire pit, outfitted with Paola Lenti furniture, provides a dramatic setting for evening cocktails—or s’mores.

On a recent weekend, the home was a hub of frenetic activity balanced by languorous lounging. Gans and some guests cooked up a gourmet Mexican lunch, while others returned from kayaking and surfing expeditions, splashed in the pool, or sprawled out on the living room’s B&B Italia sofas, listening to the sounds of crashing waves. And almost all these pursuits remained interactively in view of one another, thanks to the central courtyard.

“I ended up incorporating similar spaces into a series of homes in Uruguay,” Turin says, referring to the Villalagos Residences, a project in Punta del Este that won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ International Award in 2010. “This house has actually influenced our work.”

It came as a delightful surprise to Turin that a once-shabby beach getaway in Southern California would help shape her designs in far-off countries. But this stretch of sand is obviously a place uniquely graced for inspiration—and what could be better in a vacation home?

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